The Doors of Perception
This month I decided to look at mind expansion making this weeks book The Doors of Perception by Aldous Huxley. So lets do this.
This book is VERY short. I think The Law was maybe shorter, but this one is 79 pages, the balance of the book is a SECOND book, which I am not reviewing this time around.
The Doors or Perception was written from recordings Huxley made of himself under the influence of Mescaline. And in Spring 1953 he was approached by someone looking to expand on the psychology of mescaline use. And Huxley was all to happy to volunteer himself as guinea pig for the experiment. 1953, this was fully legal. Lucky duck.
Huxley opens by providing some of the historical background of Mescaline and how it’s use has provided philosophers with insight and the chemical composition is close to adrenaline. He discusses the discovery of LSD and how LSD mimics mescaline use. He also covers how mescalin inhibits the production of enzymes that regulate the supply of glucose to the brain, which basically starves the brain of glucose. This creates some interesting effects due to the brain needs glucose. From here, he summarizes four things that happen to the majority of those who take mescalin under supervision:
1. The ability to remember and to think straight is not really reduced at all. He does not believe he was any stupider after his mescaline use then before.
2. Visual impressions are intensified.
3. While the intellect is unimpaired and perception is improved, “the will suffers a profound change for the worse.” The user has no drive or desire to do anything.
4. While they have no drive to do anything, that’s largely because they are thinking of better things. And these better things should be experienced.
Now, Huxley is very upfront that he needs to visually see something for it to impact him, he’s not someone who read something and see pictures in his mind. Which is ironic, given he was a fairly prolific writer. But to that end, the first thing he noticed was “a slow dance of golden lights.” After which he became aware of the realm of objective fact….subjective universe lost its importance. Actual reality became everything. With a clarity of vision. Starting with focusing on a chair. Like, he became sure the chair he was looking at was the most perfect chair ever.
Then he started looking at other things. Flowers were perfect. Colors were brighter and more finely delineated. It matches the idea presented in other books I’ve read on entheogenic/hallucinogenics, that things experienced under the influence of these substances are more real than real.
After four or five hours on mescaline, as the effects were starting to wear off, the investigator who was observing Huxley took him for a drive and they went to a drug store…this would be back in the day when they had like soda counters. And apparently an AWESOME supply of books, as Huxley ended up looking at various books of art. He compared Van Gogh’s The Chair and found it wanting in comparison to Huxley’s own observations of what a Chair is.
He looked at a book of the works of Boticelli, finding The Birth of Venus, Mars and Venus, and Calumny of Apelles and thought they were interesting. Then got pulled into a deep dive of the intricacies of dress of Judith. He literally waxes poetic for five pages on the delicate draperies of Judith’s dress, before moving on to Cezanne’s self portrait, and then Vermeer.
And while Huxley may not grasp poetics, his journey with mescaline allowed him to truly grasp the intricacies of art as a mean s of contemplation, and goes on to quote Pascale “The sum of evil would be much diminished if men could only learn to sit quietly in their rooms.” But Huxley qualifies that “The contemplative whose perception has been cleansed does not have to stay in his room. He can go about his business, so completely satisfied to see and be a part of the Divine Order of Things that he will never even be tempted to indulge in what Traherne called “The Dirty Devices of the World.” When we feel ourselves to be sole heirs of the universe, when “the sea flows in our veins…and the stars are our jewels,” when all things are perceived as infinite and holy, what motive can we have for covetousness or self-assertion, for the pursuit of power or the drearier forms of pleasure?”
As Huxley came out of his mescaline high, he starts discussing the relative impact entheogens have likely had on humanity, discussing the Taoists and the Zen Buddhists and their internal searching, The Tibetan Book of the Dead is mentioned, as well as how Native American’s have ritualized it’s use in their own religious practices. He wonders if musicians would have been as fascinated by Chagall and Cezanne, or would musicians be more entranced with Mozart and Bach?
At the very end of the experiment, the Investigator invites Huxley to go for a walk in the garden, and Huxley is still more or less just floating…dissociating from reality and seeing around the corners to what is more real than real.
And he comes down to earth with some hard truths, which is where the danger of entheogens/hallucinogens really exist. “Most takers of Mescalin experience only the heavenly parts of schizophrenia. The drug brings hell and purgatory only to those who have had a recent case of jaundice, or who suffer from periodical depressions or a chronic anxiety.”
This falls easily in line with Dr. Strassman’s advice of if you have mental health problems, don’t go experimenting willy nilly. Discuss it with your doctor. And if you have liver problems…say from too much alcohol consumption…probably best to avoid mescalin.
He interestingly says the schizophrenic is like a man permanently under he influence of mescalin and unable to shut of the experience of reality. Which…I mean, shades of the Matrix, fifty years before that movie released. Also, puts schizophrenia in a whole new perspective, because….well, I drink to BLUR the lines of reality. The more real than real makes me rethink my own desire to one day experiment with psilocybin. MORE reality?! FUCK THAT!
Huxley closes out the book coming out in favor of psychedelics and hallucinogens as an entheogenic path to seeing the truth or even finding god. And there are A LOT of people out there who really need to find god.
I’m not sure where I fall on this one. Huxley is a good author, and he describes his experience in detail. But…well, it’s a bit like watching someone get drunk. Or do drugs. Fun for them. Less entertaining to watch…or read about. But some of his insights, vis a vis schizophrenia were really thought provoking. It was not as entertaining as, say, Henry Rollins describing HIS first time on hallucinogenic. But, all knowledge is worth having, so for that it was worth a read.
